Help, waves in print prusa i3

Fristly I have a Folger Tech Prusa i3 2020
I know this has been discussed before but I haven't been able to find my exact issue.
According to my research it seems like vibration and/or motor steps can be the cause of this. There is a diagonal wave pattern that matches perfectly on x and y side walls. On cylindrical objects the wave wraps around the object making it look almost like threads on a screw. I'll post a picture tonight.

What I'm trying to figure out is if the extruder stepper is causing it because on the first layer, the extrusion lines are thick/thin alternating almost like sharp steps in the motor. I know some extruders are geared instead of direct drive like mine. I thought those were older tech but could it be a better way to push filament evenly or is this even the issue?

I found it is most similar to the picture here [www.3dhubs.com] and they discuss everything to resolve his issue except for extruder resolution possibilities which I think is the main cause.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2015 01:16PM by naps1saps.

I was getting that after installing lead screws and in slic3r I set all the speed settings to 0 amd set auto speed max to 50mm/s and it got rid of it. It seems like I will get this when I change something on the printer and then after some messing around I am able to get rid of it again until I upgrade something else.

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Newbie with Folgertech 2020 i3.

My lead screws are definatley not straight but that does not really explain the thick thin extrusion causing the pattern on the side wall :\ I will take a look at the settings you suggested. I don't know much about steppers and drivers. Is there a stepper motor I can get that has smaller steps like a 0.9? Would it work with the default drivers on the Ramps 1.4 board?

Also, since you have the same kit, do you have issues with the x axis stepper causing a lot of vibration when it moves? I've tried turning down the POT on the driver and swapping drivers but it makes no difference fast or slow. Causes things to rattle and make noise like the lead screw/nut on the stepper side. Tried using dampening material on the stepper mount to no avail.

I don't really think my X vibrates much. I would see how it feels moving it by hand with the belt off the motor.

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Newbie with Folgertech 2020 i3.

When I took the motor off it felt fine. the bearings are lubed up and slide good. I took the Y axis apart and lubed up those bearings and adjusted everything so its straight and the y axis is much more solid and smooth now but X vibrates too much. When it hits that resonance frequency it sounds like a super loud dot matrix printer. I'll probably take a video of it or something.

My Y axis (the bed) was pretty loud like that adding a 4th bearing to the carriage got that much quieter.

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Newbie with Folgertech 2020 i3.

Wow, I never posted the fix!!!
I replaced a scanner unit on a copier shortly after and my company said to scrap it so I ended up with two nice NEMA17 steppers that were slightly larger/more powerful.
Replaced the X and extruder steppers with them and viola the issue was gone.
I verified the stepper was the issue and noticed it did not turn the same number of degrees for each step. It seems like it would do .5 step then 1.5 step alternating so it was not working well with micro stepping.

So moral of the story is: cheap steppers can cause issues.